ParaNet BBS/hill2
From KB42
ParaNet BBS/hill2
| File Name: | hill2.txt |
|---|---|
| Author: | Unknown |
| Date: | Unknown |
| Posting BBS: | Unknown |
| BBS Main Page: | ParaNet Main Page |
| Key Words: | ParaNet, UFO, Ufology |
(11660) Tue 22 Sep 92 1:07p
By: Tessa Hebert
To: Nick Boutros
Re: Where Greys Come From 1/2
St:
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@MSGID: 1:3803/8 2abf6454
Nick:
I noticed your interest in Betty Hill's star map, and I found this
very interesting, from the book THE UFO VERDICT: EXAMINING THE
EVIDENCE, by Robert Sheaffer, copyright 1980, published in 1986 by
Prometheus Books, Buffalo, New York, softbound, ISBN 0-87975-338-2,
$13.95, quotes from pages 39-43.
"Much attention has been focused on this supposed star pattern,
which Betty Hill claims to have seen aboard the UFO and
subsequently sketch by post-hypnotic suggestion (plate 4). The
reason for all this attention has been the work of Miss Marjorie
Fish, former third-grade teacher at the Oak Harbor Elementary
School in Ohio. Using colored beads strung out on a 3-D frame,
she claims to have matched the `stars' drawn by Betty Hill with
a group of nearby stars that are all similar to the sun, and
which appear to be likely places to find habitale planets. Miss
Fish utilized the most accurate astronomical reference work
currently available, and the basic accuracy of her star
positions has been established.
"One of the biggest boosters of the Fish map has been Stanton
Friedman, a well-known professional UFO lecturer who bills
himself as `The Flying Saucer Physicist.' When he and Betty
Hill appeared together on the Tom Snyder Show on NBC-TV (October
22-23, 1975), Friedman made it sound as if the stars of the Fish
map, alone among all the stars in the universe, matched the
`stars' of Betty Hill's sketch like an apple fits its skin.
"All fifteen of the stars on the Hill sketch were identified by
Miss Fish, according to Friedman, and all of them are the kind
of stars that are likely to have habitable planets. Since this
is true of only about 5 percent of the stars in our part of the
galaxy, Friedman went on to say: `The chances that the Fish map
would grab fifteen and come up with the right kind are, well,...
astronomical.' `Every one of the stars on the map are the right
kind of stars, and all the right kind of stars in the
neighborhood are part of the map,' he told an amazed Tom Snyder.
"Another well-known proponent of the Fish map is Dr. David
Saunders, a psychologist formerly of the Univerity of Colorado
and the University of Chicago, who was a dissident member of the
Condon Committee. Dr. Saunders, a specialist in statistics, has
estimated that the odds against a random pattern of stars
matching Betty's sketch as well as the Fish map is `at least
1000-to-1.' 15
"The only problem with statements such as these is that they are
incorrect and misleading. All fifteen stars have been
identified, according to Friedman, but he neglects to mention
that Betty's original sketch contains twenty-six stars, not
just fifteen. Why doesn't the Fish map identify the remaining
eleven? Three of Betty's background stars (unconnected by
lines) are included in the Fish map, because they fit nicely,
but the other eleven are ignored. This is hardly a valid
scientific procedure.
"As for the claim that all the stars that fit the pattern are
exactly the right kind for supporting planets with life,
Friedman neglected to tell us that Fish excluded other stars on
theoretical grounds, as being unsuitable for supporting
life-bearing planets.
"Betty Hill shows a star between the point represented on the
Fish map by Tau Ceti and Gliese 86, but Fish does not. Zeta 1
and Zeta 2 Reticuli on the Fish map (the supposed home base of
the UFOnauts) are shown as giant globes on Betty's sketch,
supposedly because they are high above the rest of the map in
the third dimension and hence appear larger. Yet other stars on
the map, such as Tau 1 Eridani and Gliese 95, are equally high
above the rest of the stars, but they appear as tiny dots, not
as giant globes. Furthermore, although the globes in Betty
Hill's sketch are widely separated, on the fish map Zeta 1 and
Zeta 2 Reticuli are so close as to be inseparable without a
magnifying glass (though of course they are never drawn that
way).
"Another investigator of the Hill star-map is Charles W.
Atterberg of Elgin, Illinois. He has made an interesting
finding concerning these two principal stars on the Fish map.
Generating a mathematical representation of the Fish map, which
is far more accurate than stringing up beads, Atterberg found
that the orientation of Zeta 1 and Zeta 2 Reticuli, as given in
the star catalogs, is totally out of line with the corresponding
giant globes of the Hill sketch. The lines connecting Betty's
globes slant northwest and southeast, but a line through the two
Zetas actually slant northeast and southwest (although the
distinction is largely academic, since magnification would be
required to even see Zeta 1 and Zeta 2 as separate objects were
the Fish map drawn accurately). Thus on the two most critical
points of the map, the supposed `home base' stars of the
UFOnauts, the Fish map is totally wrong in the orientation and
separation of these stars.
"As Cornell University astronomers Steven Soter and Carl Sagan
point out,16 the only reason that there appears to be any
resemblance at all between the Hill sketch and the Fish stars is
because of the way the lines have been drawn. View the two
patterns simply as dots, without any lines to help the reader
visualize the resemblance, and the two patterns look about as
different as can be.
"Not only is the resemblance between the Fish map and the Hill
sketch questionable, but more than one pattern of stars has been
found that appears to match the sketch. As I have noted
elsewhere,17 at least two other such `identifications' of the
Hill sketch have thus far been documented.
"In 1965 a map of the constellation Pegasus appeared in the _New
York Times,_ showing a location of a strange astronomical object
designated CTA-102, which a Russian radio astronomer claimed was
an artificial radio beacon in space. Upon seeing the map, Betty
Hill noted a striking resemblance between the stars of the
constellation Pegasus and the stars she had drawn on her sketch.
She then proceeded to fill into her sketch the corresponding
star names from the _New York Times_ map. (Of course, these are
entirely different stars from the ones on the Fish map.) The
supposedly artificial radio source, CTA-102, appeared very near
the UFOnauts' supposed home base, the star Zeta Pegasi. Was it
a beacon go guide the UFOs home from their explorations?
"This Pegasus map so impressed author John Fuller that he
included it in _The Interrupted Journey._ It appeared to
provide strong evidence in support of Mrs. Hill's story. But
the case for the Pegasus map quickly fell apart. Other
astronomers soon refuted the sensationalist claims that had been
made about CTA-102. This supposedly artificial object turned
out to be simply another quasar (whatever _that_ may someday
turn out to be), and that was the end of the Pegasus map.
"The third supposed identification of the star map of Betty Hill
was proposed by Atterberg. He computed the patterns made by
certain groups of stars when viewed from various perspectives in
space. After much labor, Atterberg discovered that there exists
a point in space, along the southern boundary of the
constellation Ophiuchus, from which the stars in the sun's
vicinity appear to match almost exactly the pattern of the Hill
sketch. The Atterberg map fits the sketch much more closely
than does the Fish map, identifying twenty-five of Hill's
twenty-six stars, instead of just fifteen. Atterberg did not
restrict himself to just the stars favorable for life. He
started out by plotting all the stars in the sun's vicinity,
which makes it all the more remarkable that the majority of the
stars supposedly visited by the aliens (according to this map)
are quite favorable for life. Of the eleven stars supposedly
>>> Continued to next message
---
SLMR 2.1 UFO = Unsavory Feckless Obfuscator
--- SFScan v2wb/1
@SEEN-BY 10/8 11/2 3 12/12 13/13 101/1 104/1 2 215 400 422 424 428 435
@SEEN-BY 104/501 512 605 617 801 820 106/116 107/33 109/25 114/5
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@SEEN-BY 1012/3
@PATH: 3803/8 1 124/4115 1 396/1 13/13 104/1 424 422
* Origin: The Midnight Express, (318) 334-9924 (1:3803/8.0)
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(11661) Tue 22 Sep 92 1:07p
By: Tessa Hebert
To: Nick Boutros
Re: Where Greys Come From 2/2
St:
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
@MSGID: 1:3803/8 2abf6455
>>> Continued from previous message
visited by aliens (not counting the sun), seven of them are
listed in Stephen H. Dole's Rand Corporation study, _Habitable
Planets for Man,_ as stars `that could have habitable planets.'
Not a bad percentage for stars selected at random from the solar
neighborhood!
"Even more surprising is the fact that the three stars that form
the heart of the Atterberg map--Epsilon Eridani, Epsilon Indi,
and Tau Ceti--which are connected by lines supposedly
representing the major trade routes of the UFOnauts, have been
described by Carl Sagan as `the three nearest stars of potential
biological interest.'18 Surely this is more remarkable than any
of the evidence supporting the Fish map.
"The purpose of this discussion is not to convince you that
Atterberg has found the home star of Betty Hill's abductors, but
to show that an impressive-sounding case can be made for more
than one map. If I had to choose one of these three maps, I'd
pick the Atterberg map as being the most impressive--it is,
after all the closest to Betty Hill's sketch. Even Miss Fish
concedes that the Atterberg map is accurate, though she goes on
to argue that her own map is better. But `better' is not the
issue here: _there are simply too many star patterns that fit
Betty Hill's sketch._ Random star positions, when rotated,
sorted, and manipulated, can be made to match nearly any
pre-established pattern, as long as we are willing to expend
enough time and effort to obtain a match. Atterberg illustrated
this point nicely when he showed his map to a friend who had not
previously seen the Hill sketch. He reports that his friend
quickly replied that he knew exactly what the map represented:
`It`s the neighborhood I live in. This is my house. That is
the house on the corner. And if we angle up this way, this
takes me down Devon Street, and there's the gas station.'
"If twelve more people, each as intelligent and as dedicated as
Marjorie Fish or Charles Atterberg, were freely to devote months
or even years of their spare time to a painstaking analysis of
the existing star catalogs, in due time we would have a dozen
more of these maps, each closely resembling the pattern sketched
by Betty Hill, and each one boasting of some amazing feature
that simply cannot be explained unless we accept the map as
having been drawn from something Mrs. Hill saw aboard a UFO."
----------
15. David Saunders, _Astronomy,_ August 1975.
16. Steven Soter and Carl Sagan, _Astronomy,_ July 1975.
17. Robert Sheaffer, _Astronomy,_ July 1975; _Official UFO,_
August 1976.
18. Carl Sagan and I.S. Shklovskii, _Intelligent Life in the
Universe_ (San Francisco: Holden-Day, 1966), p. 349.
---
SLMR 2.1 UFO = Unsavory Feckless Obfuscator
--- SFScan v2wb/1
@SEEN-BY 10/8 11/2 3 12/12 13/13 101/1 104/1 2 215 400 422 424 428 435
@SEEN-BY 104/501 512 605 617 801 820 106/116 107/33 109/25 114/5
@SEEN-BY 115/887 123/19 124/1 1111 2107 3108 4109 4115 5118 6106 7001
@SEEN-BY 138/112 139/630 151/1003 153/752 203/23 209/209 260/1 266/22
@SEEN-BY 267/200 270/101 271/270 280/1 283/657 321/109 390/1 396/1 15
@SEEN-BY 1012/3
@PATH: 3803/8 1 124/4115 1 396/1 13/13 104/1 424 422
* Origin: The Midnight Express, (318) 334-9924 (1:3803/8.0)
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(11662) Tue 22 Sep 92 3:58p
By: Tessa Hebert
To: Nick Boutrous
Re: Where Greys Come From 1a
St:
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
@MSGID: 1:3803/8 2abf8739
Nick, my SLMR deleted this part of the message. It goes in between
parts 1/2 and 2/2:
".... constellation Ophiuchus, from which the stars in the sun's
vicinity appear to match almost exactly the pattern of the Hill
sketch. The Atterberg map fits the sketch much more closely than
does the Fish map, identifying twenty-five of Hill's twenty-six
stars, instead of just fifteen. Atterberg did not restrict himself
to just the stars favorable for life. He started out by plotting
all the stars in the sun's vicinity, which makes it all the more
remarkable that the majority of the stars supposedly visited by the
aliens (according to this map) are quire favorable for life. Of
the eleven stars supposedly...."
Sorry, I didn't notice it was cutting out part of the message (it
looked fine before I posted it) until I saw it already posted on the UFO
echo.
--Tessa
---
SLMR 2.1 PANDORA.ZIP Warning! Do not unzip this file!
--- SFScan v2wb/1
@SEEN-BY 10/8 11/2 3 12/12 13/13 101/1 104/1 2 215 400 422 424 428 435
@SEEN-BY 104/501 512 605 617 801 820 106/116 107/33 109/25 114/5
@SEEN-BY 115/887 123/19 124/1 1111 2107 3108 4109 4115 5118 6106 7001
@SEEN-BY 138/112 139/630 151/1003 153/752 203/23 209/209 260/1 266/22
@SEEN-BY 267/200 270/101 271/270 280/1 283/657 321/109 390/1 396/1 15
@SEEN-BY 1012/3
@PATH: 3803/8 1 124/4115 1 396/1 13/13 104/1 424 422
* Origin: The Midnight Express, (318) 334-9924 (1:3803/8.0)
